Love Letters to Anne

Bear with me as I oscillate. I’m going through these memories and emotions in a raw and honest way. The only way I know how. I’m speaking my truth and the facts about all these feelings bubble up in a very non-linear way. Anyway, bear with me.

The last time I think I saw my adoptive mother was probably ten years ago now. It’s complicated to say the least. Family dynamics and the cold realities of hard times and very little bond between us, the distance just grew. And it pained me, but eventually for my own peace, I forgave her everything I would hold her accountable for, and then, I just let go.

That’s something I was taught. Everything’s temporary, and love is conditional and can be withdrawn at any time. It was a slow death of a thousand cuts. And finally one day, after many agonizing years when I became aware that I wasn’t important anymore, the shiny penny had turned a petina and gone brown. The new puppy was just an old dog now that required too much attention, was too needy, he had to go. I was cramping her style and when in later years, she did help me in some desperate times, I was still just a burden who couldn’t get his shit together.

See, I had to not only figure out most of the mysteries of life on my own, I had no stability and was constantly in turmoil of one kind or another. I was always restarting and beginning again to try to establish something for myself, roots maybe. The attempts were many, with many different actors in multiple theatres, fighting multiple catastrophes, I would get knocked down often, but I kept going. I just kept getting back up and moving forward even when there were times I was only treading water.

That was the secret to my success, just move forward, even tiny steps would be progress. But all I was doing was fighting to survive.

It’s not like I didn’t have any help ever, far from it. I only survived by the grace and blessings of others. But there plenty of times that I was swimming in the deep end by myself. Sometimes sinking on purpose.

I dealt with this constant cycle of feast and famine by drinking and doing drugs. I’ve smoked a whole Amazonian forest of herb. I’ve drank an ocean of alcohol, and I lost count of how many times I went tripping into the cosmic truths of the universal Mind.

The Void saw me staring into it, and it stared back. Beckoning me, singing songs of relief and peaceful existence, universal love and other things, sometimes not as kind. It can go both ways in the Void, but I adapted to this as well. Break on through to the other side. The sirens calling me to steer my ship into the rocks in the shallows, to be dashed to pieces.

Anyhow, I was numbing pain and trauma. I became chaotic evil. I went dark for a very long time while I was trying to make sense of the chaos that befell and consumed me.

These are the things, and they are many, that I had to overcome. It’s important to my story to understand all of this darkness. It literally cast me into the world that was full of predators of every kind. The chaos turning me angrier and more bitter with every cycle and rotation.

I stopped caring for a long time. My mission was put on hold to do things like stay sheltered and fed.

The Abyss was bliss.

The roads were long and winding, the lights leading the way, flickering and blinding. I fell into a cycle of self medicating to deal with all the things I carried like crippling anxiety, self-doubt and uncertainty amidst the crashing waves, rising with the tide that was coming, ever coming to wash away my castles made of sand. I could have easily fallen here because I didn’t care anymore. The Void, and it’s relief swallowed me and took me away for a time. All I needed was a few hours, like my sleeping cycle, just a little rest; I was young and strong, sharper than most, and driven, but it came at a cost that required constant attention.

I’ve been accused of being too intense, but my life was a pressure cooker. It takes a toll.

But I was transcending. I was evolving, and even in the darkness of my Abyss, I knew what I still had to do. I knew the only way I was going to know peace was by finding my family. The only way I could become healed and complete was to find them. The only real way I could finally start living my life instead of trying to survive my life was to find them. In my mind, I’m my heart I knew this, but for many years, I despaired about how to find them. And the Void was how I dealt with it.

I was careless and reckless. I dared the world to kill me, if it could, because I was free in my mind of the fear of death. I just didn’t care.

But I wanted to.